Texas Courts of Appeals
Monjaras v. State
No. 01-19-00608-CR 08/17/23
Issue:
Did the defendant’s actions of being in a high crime area, not looking at the officers and walking away from their patrol car, and his nervousness when talking to the police constitute reasonable suspicion to elevate an consensual encounter into an investigative detention?
Holding:
No. The court held that neither the area’s high-crime reputation nor any of the defendant’s actions gave rise to reasonable suspicion to believe that the defendant had engaged, or was about to engage, in criminal activity. Read opinion.
Concurrence (Goodman, J):
“I agree with the result the majority reaches but disagree with its analysis in two respects. First, the majority erroneously relies on evidence the trial court did not consider below. Second, though the majority nonetheless reaches the correct result, its analysis gives insufficient consideration to the totality of the circumstances in assessing whether the officers had reasonable suspicion when they detained Monjaras, which may give readers the misimpression that the court did not apply the correct standard of review in reaching its result. So, I respectfully concur in the judgment but write to address these two shortcomings in the majority’s analysis.”
Commentary:
Prosecutors should be wary of this decision, not because the court necessarily reached the wrong result, but because of how the majority reached its holding. In pages 22-29 of the majority opinion, the court dealt with each factor in the officers’ reasonable-suspicion determination separately, never considering those factors together. The Court of Criminal Appeals has previously rejected this divide-and-conquer approach to analyzing trial-level factual and legal determinations, but because the high court has already reviewed this decision once (to find that the defendant was subjected to a detention and not merely a consensual encounter), it is questionable whether the high court would want to review this decision again.
Bordelon v. State
No. 05-22-00108-CR 8/16/23
Issue:
Because IP addresses are subject to periodic change, has a warrant affidavit become stale if a tip that child pornography has been downloaded at a specific IP address is not executed promptly after the geolocation of the IP address?
Holding:
No. The factual basis for probable cause did not grow stale. The court concluded that even though the affidavit did not specifically state the target date of the IP address search, it was nonetheless reasonable for the magistrate to infer that the detective investigated ownership of the IP address for the date of the uploads and that she was provided credible information linking the downloaded images to the defendant’s IP and physical address through Microsoft and an Internet Services Provider. Read opinion.
Commentary:
This is an extremely thorough decision on the validity of the search warrant. All prosecutors who litigate the validity of search warrants should read this decision, especially those who handle child-pornography cases. The techniques to uncover those who traffic in child pornography are becoming more and more sophisticated, and it is important for prosecutors to get familiar with those techniques, as well as with the law that supports law enforcement’s efforts in those cases. Much of that law can be found outside Texas, as confirmed by this decision.